Circle and Centre

Once the world was complete, and the gods were marvelling at their creation, a discussion began concerning mankind. This creature, unlike all others, had the power of free will. They had the potential to take care of the Earth, as kind and loving benefactors, and spread harmony and love throughout the world. Or they could become tyrannical, self-important, and destructive in their hunger to demonstrate their power over each other and all other creatures. Surely both aspects would always be present? There will be golden ages, where mankind embraces the light of selfless love, and dark ages, when this creature is tormented in ignorance. This must be so! It is the nature of free will. Mankind must grow from infancy, to eventually embody his true adult nature, through all the painful stages of development. And the completion of this cycle is by no means assured. This is the nature of free will. Mankind must make the critical choices by himself. The gods knew that they could not intervene in this. “But perhaps we can assist” suggested the sky god, “give the support of a loving parent.” “The knowledge of how to maintain balance and harmony must be planted somewhere, so that those who are willing to seek it can become guides to others,” said the ocean goddess. “Perhaps deep in my ocean womb, so they feel drawn to return to me.” “No, that would be too easy. They would find it there in a few millennia,” said the mountains. “The top of my highest peaks would be better. Few will come there, and those who do will carry their far visions back to the valleys.” “These are all good suggestions,” said the moon, “but we have to remember one thing. Mankind has the whole of creation within. The world is a reflection of his nature. He can create heaven or hell on Earth.” They pondered a long time. “We must put the truth in the one place where mankind will hardly ever think to look. This way, the discovery will be gradual, and when completed, it will be irreversible.” And so it was decided. The key to self-realisation would be hidden inside the human heart.

Grandmother Earth weaves the web of life as she spins around the sun, informing, maintaining, transforming and dissolving all beings in her care. Life ebbs and flows, from spirit into matter, and back into spirit. The in-breath and the out-breath of creation is not an event of remote history, but an integral part of the continually changing present.

A seed is the link with the eternal realm, a contracted potential. Under the right conditions, some seeds remain intact for thousands of years. When the life force enters, expansion takes place, and from the seed, emerges the tree.

An acorn knows how to become an oak tree. Beyond the replication and specialisation of cells, it also contains numerous adaptive capabilities to maximise its life, whatever the environmental circumstances. This inbuilt knowledge we can call ancestral memory.

The memory within an acorn is the accumulation of all previous incarnations, from acorn to oak to acorn. As oaks evolved from prior species, they share a common ancestry with all plant life, back to the first primordial life. The numerous transformations made along this journey are also retained within the seed memory.

Every lifecycle leaves its imprint in memory. The most recent adaptations are the outer rings, corresponding in humans to the cultural and tribal memory that underpins recent history. Deeper still is the memory of our migrant ancestors, who navigated their survival during eras of upheaval. These were the progenitors of all the current races of humans on the Earth. They passed on to us the memory of our species, and its origins. Beyond species is the memory that links us with all mammalian quadrupeds. Closer to the core is the ancestral memory that resonates with plant and ocean life. At its essence, memory connects every species back to the source.

A newly fertilised egg of a human embryo divides to create a placenta. The seed unfurls, gathering nutrients from the mother soil, and an individual expression of the universal vital force that is destined to find its way into a human life begins a journey of transformation. Each one of us has made this journey and the memory that was the seed of life provided the map. At first, we were disembodied, unconscious, and unformed. Then through protozoan, algae, fungi and plant stages, our consciousness reached for the light. A human infant is born out of one fertilised cell. But the miracle does not stop there. From plant, through fish, reptile, and bird consciousness, the infant wriggles and swims, until the force that pulls her upright guides her into human consciousness.

When a human heartbeat stops, the life dissolves away. That which once seemed permanent, instantly becomes of the past. For relatives and friends, a death is a cataclysmal change. Further from this epicentre, it is registered as a slight ripple.

Throughout the world, this exchanging of energy, through birth and death, is a state of continuous dynamic metamorphosis. It is a nuclear chain reaction, of life giving way to more life, ever evolving and transmuting.

One of the most potent symbols is a circle. The centre of the circle is connected to all directions. There are an infinite number of points on the circle, but only one centre. The circle is to the centre that which the universe is to the source. The centre is the contracted circle, and the circle the expanded centre.